Screen Test of Time

The winner of the 1949 awards, All the King’s Men is an interesting example of how a good movie can be made by accident… but can a film be accidentally great?

The Heiress is the second movie in 3 weeks where producers tried to make Olivia de Havilland "ugly" to win an Oscar. De Havilland plays, rather unconvincingly, a wealthy young woman in the mid-1800s courted by a gold digging Montgomery Clift as the ur-f*ck boy, who runs away and abandons her the minute her abusive jerk of a dad threatens to take away her inheritance. Despite its many flaws, once s...

Based on a serialized novel that was printed in Cosmo, A Letter to Three Wives is an absolutely bonkers film about an off-screen narrator running off with the husband of one of her so-called best friends, and then sending all of them a letter telling them to guess which one. Really. It is really about that.

The Snake Pit , based on the autobiographical book of the same name, is the story of one woman’s experience inside a mental institution, and the treatment, both cruel and sympathetic, she receives at the hands of the mental health industry. Olivia de Havilland stars in one of those roles the Academy loves— typically pretty and elegant woman wears slightly less makeup and has somewhat disheveled ha...

For decades after its release, The Red Shoes remained the most popular dance film ever created, surely for the 20+ minute dream ballet sequence toward the middle of the film. But the rest of the movie’s plot, equally infuriating for its sexist love triangle and abuse apologia disguised as artistic genius, is a nightmare.

Johnny Belinda , a movie named first for an infant child barely seen in the film and secondly for the so-called main character onto whom everyone around her projects their own feelings and presumptions rather than just let her express herself, begins the long and frustrating history of the Academy’s effusive celebration of able actors portraying disabled characters in Inspiration Porn.

This week, David and Suzan do what they do best: passionately tear a Shakespeare film adaptation to shreds. This time, it’s the 1948 winner, Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. And we do mean Laurence Olivier’s, as he directed, starred in, produced, and even added text to this dour slog that, for some reason, became the gold standard for 20th century adaptations of the play, and is largely responsible for...

The nominees for 1948 start strong with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , a classic that deserves the designation, starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim Holt as itinerant Americans searching for their fortune in 1920s Mexico. A stellar supporting cast, breathtaking on-location sets, and excellent direction from John Huston ( The Maltese Falcon ) make this a top notch flick. It’s the fi...

Take Cary Grant, cast him as a literal, from heaven, with supernatural powers angel trying to seduce the wife of a stuck up, cold, neglectful bishop, and then throw away any lascivious or even interesting ideas that inspires in you when you consider it, and you’ll have the shockingly lifeless The Bishop’s Wife . It’s definitely not the Best Picture that should have been for 1947, but find out what...

It's the unusual movie where the child actors at the beginning of the film have a better handle on their characters than the adult actors who play them for the rest of it, but this adaptation of Dickens's Great Expectations holds that distinction. Unfortunately, it makes the rest of the movie a tremendous letdown, and the film takes a confusing turn for the worse when its horribly miscast leads ta...

The second of back to back movies dealing with anti-semitism, Gentleman’s Agreement is the serious message movie version, and, unsurprisingly by Academy Award standards, the winner of the two. But is it the best of the two? And is it really the best picture of 1947?

Contrary to our hosts’ expectation, Crossfire is not the obvious inspiration for the 90’s tabletop board game, but is both an enjoyable film noir and a compelling message movie— an unusual combination that nevertheless works really well, even as it has some obvious and glaring flaws.

Believe it or not, Miracle on 34th Street was released just a couple of weeks later in the year in 1947 than this episode’s release date in 2021, despite being 100% about Santa Claus. The second Christmas movie our hosts have had to watch recently and entirely out of season, this one didn’t sit as well with David in an 80+ degree Los Angeles April as It’s A Wonderful Life a few weeks ago. Suzan se...

The Razor’s Edge starring Gene Tierney, Tyrone Power, and Anne Baxter is a film so uneven as to be whip-lash inducing. A bizarre and meandering first 90 minutes eventually lead to a tight, hour long thriller that barrels forward at lightning speed. But how good can a movie possibly be when almost half of it should have been cut?

It’s A Wonderful Life is best known as the movie everyone watches on television at Christmas time, but Suzan has never seen it before, and David’s never seen it outside of the month of December, so how does it hold up when our hosts watch it in the middle of spring?

Who would have thought that a Saturday afternoon kid’s matinee of a movie would cause such controversy? Suzan thinks The Yearling is a well made movie for which she is absolutely not the audience, while David’s childhood experience with the genre makes his criteria for a good “boy adventurer” movie quite strict. Will his argument bring down Suzan’s opinion, or will hers raise David’s estimation of...

The winner of the 1946 nominees, The Best Years of Our Lives is a well intentioned story of three men returning home to their very different families after World War II that set the bar for confronting the challenges facing returning military veterans. While there are two or three solidly acted and moving scenes, Best Years tends seems to think shutting up, getting a good job, and marrying a nice...

From time to time, a Best Picture nominee feels as if it were an intentional attack across the decades to specifically dispirit and infuriate David and Suzan. Laurence Olivier’s turn as director and star of Henry V , released in 1944 but confusingly nominated for the 1946 Oscars, is one of those acts of future aggression.

The last Hitchcock film to be nominated for Best Picture shows the iconic director going out with a fizzle rather than a bang. Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck star in this confusing muddle of a psychological thriller that not even a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dalí can save. And our hosts make a surprising choice for the should have won film from this year.

While Suzan did not take David’s suggestion and just cut in a few key words and phrases to the previous episode for 1944’s Going My Way , the sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s , is so similar that it was a half-way legitimate suggestion. Bing Crosby returns to the screen as Father Chuck O’Malley, here to save yet another church and yet another late teen girl, this time with a trusty sidekick nun pla...

The winner of 1945, The Lost Weekend, is a melodramatic and at times embarrassing addiction drama, confoundingly soundtracked by eerie theremin music, with a clownish performance by lead actor Ray Milland, and neither of our hosts are impressed.

The best thing Suzan and David can say about the Joan Crawford vehicle Mildred Pierce, a movie full of terrible characters being terrible to one another, is at least it’s not very long.

The 1945 nominees have kicked off with a doozy of a musical comedy. Anchors Aweigh stars Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly as two sailors just trying to find a couple of girls to hook up with while on leave from the Navy for a few days, until they are somehow drawn into babysitting, the Hollywood studio business, and a Tom and Jerry cartoon (no, that’s not a metaphor for anything). It’s a wild ride, bu...

Ostensibly a biopic of President Woodrow Wilson, Wilson is a confusing muddle of unnecessary special effects, retconned history, and a characterization of the man that is so completely divergent from historical fact as to be infuriating. Also, David and Suzan determine who the real winner of 1944 should have been, and it’s not Going My Way .

Not to be confused with the Kelly Clarkson banger, “Since U Been Gone,” Since You Went Away is a nearly 3 hour film about the WWII home front starring Claudette Colbert, Joseph Cotton, Hattie McDaniel, and Jennifer Jones about which our hosts have very different opinions.